EVERY- DAY LIFE OF INDIAN WOMEN. 49 



who roam the world at will, and whose interests are often fixed 

 far more outside than inside onr homes, it may seem remarkable 

 that such infinitesimal restrictions and numberless customs as are 

 found in full swing in an orthodox Hindoo household should be 

 remembered and carried out with the exactitude demanded of the 

 womenkind ; but if we consider that these make up their whole 

 life, and that they are called upon to pay attention to nothing else, 

 their capacity for recollecting when to veil and unveil, whom to 

 address and avoid, when they must run away, and when they may 

 speak, ceases to be extraordinary. And regarding these customs 

 of social propriety, I must say that the more one studies them the 

 more one is impressed with their perverted ingenuity. They seem 

 purposely invented to make the unfortunate victim of them as 

 uncomfortable as possible. The Indian woman, isolated from 

 the outer world by custom, is again by custom isolated as far as 

 practicable from all the male members of that little inner world to 

 which she is confined. Free intercourse, even with her own hus- 

 band, is not permitted her while yet her youthful capabilities 

 for joyousness exist. No wonder, then, that absence of jollity is 

 a characteristic of the Indians generally, for the happy laugh- 

 ter of a home is denied them by custom in the most persistent 

 manner. 



Every person belonging to the European races, an Englishman 

 especially, well knows how much common meals tend to social sym- 

 pathy ; how powerful a factor they are in promoting pleasurable 

 family existence, and in educating the young to good manners. 

 There is nothing of this sort in Indian upper-class society. There 

 the men and women dine strictly apart, the women greatly on the 

 leavings of the men, and that, too, in messes of degree, very like 

 those in a royal naval ship. Paterfamilias dines by himself, then 

 the other men together in groups, according to standing, waited 

 on by the women under fixed rules ; and lastly the women, when 

 the men have done, our poor young bride coming last of all, 

 obliged often to be content with the roughest of the fare. 



No imported woman may have any relations with those males 

 who are her seniors. Every bride is such an imported woman, 

 and all the household which she enters, who are the seniors of her 

 husband, are her seniors. This at first generally includes nearly 

 the whole family, and must necessarily for a long while include 

 the major part of it. In all her life she never speaks to her hus- 

 band's father, uncles, or elder brothers, though dwelling under the 

 same roof, or, to speak more correctly, within the same inclosure, 

 for an Indian house is what we should call a courtyard surround- 

 ed by sets of apartments. On the other hand, paterfamilias has 

 not only never been spoken to, but technically never even seen, by 

 any of the younger women of his varied household, except those 



VOL. XXXIV. — 4 



